Do Change: EU – Taiwan Medical Project Launched

Do Something Different is at the core of a €4.6m EU Project to connect wearable medical tech with behaviour change

Officially launched in Eindhoven last month, Do Change is an exciting new EU-funded project designed to link inputs from medical devices, nutritional sensors, doctors and consultants to Do Something Different’s behaviour change methodology.

The objective is to improve health and reduce risks, initially for patients with complex high blood pressure, heart disease or heart failure. The project puts the patient at the very centre of a new health ecosystem – Do Change – which will help the patient to change their lifestyle based on the near real-time inputs from the devices and sensors and cardiovascular care teams.

Professor Ben (C) Fletcher, co-founder of Do Something Different explains:

“Research suggests that following a serious medical event, as many as 90% of people who are advised to change their behaviour to reduce the risk of further problems fail to do so.

“Modern medical procedures often treat the medical condition with appropriate drugs and care regimes, but usually do not include a behaviour change component to help a patient make critical lifestyle changes, like losing weight for example, reducing salt or calorie intake or improving their activity levels.

Bringing all the elements together in a patient-centred health ecosystem

“The aim of the Do Change pilot project is to bring all of these elements together in a patient-centred health ecosystem. Put simply, the patient will monitor their condition and what they eat at home with the new devices which feed into the Do Change system. This will inform the kind of lifestyle changes required, which in turn will help to shape a Do programme in near real-time.

“The patient will receive Do’s designed by our psychologists to encourage him or her to make the changes the cardiology team suggests they need to make for their long-term health.

“Of course the patients doctors also have access to the system and will monitor the medical data and the behaviour change feedback to ensure that each patient is making progress.”

First steps: meeting in EindhovenDo Change is a collaboration between 11 organisations in the EU and Taiwan. The project will cost €4.6m from the EU over three years funded under the EU HORIZON 2020 scheme with an additional €1m from the Taiwanese government. The organisations met in Eindhoven to kick off the project. Within one year there will be a first evaluation of the new Do Change health ecosystem.

Professor Ben Fletcher attended for Do Something Different along with our Project Management expert Roz Sutton. Roz says: “The first steps are to look at how we can technically integrate our Do Something Different system with inputs from sources from our partners.”